Boneheads Wiki:Manual of style
This covers how we would like an article to look on this wiki at creation. While not an enforced policy, try to follow it the best you can. An article is a content page about the knowledge – a character, item, enemy, game, etc. The goal of the is to add as many articles as possible to fill up the knowledge base, but some basic guidelines will help you get a good start either creating an article or expanding one. We have some specific criteria that should go into every article from its creation, and some enhancements to make it even better. Though not mentioned, all articles should have relatively good grammar. Please do NOT create tiny articles just for the sake of filling in red links. Even if the article you are making is about a minor subject, try to put a decent amount of effort into it rather than a rush job. Critical Criteria #'Bold' and repeat the title of the article in the first sentence. #'Details' – don't state the obvious. Provide some information about the subject too, as much as you can. #'Link' to as many other articles as possible once and only once. #'Italicize' all game titles as well as linking them. #'Navigation' via . #'Categorize' with many . Enhancements #'Images' to visualize the article. #'Knowledge/Notice Templates' like , . #'Tables' to lay out statistics neatly. How to Create or Edit an Article *'Create:' – Clicking on a red link brings you right to the edit box. Searching and then clicking "create this page" does the same. *'Edit:' – While viewing any article, click the "edit" tab, third from the left. Naming an Article Step by Step: Example Article Let's say that the article "Boneheads Wiki" was created by a user, and it was part of the knowledge base (in reality it is not and an article about the wiki itself, unlike Wikipedia, would be deleted). Here's the wikitext (what appears in the editbox) of this article: :is a wkii about the disney channel original series, boneheads. has many articles like roccos and bone you must craete an account to edit. First of all, the understood guideline "good grammar" is obviously broken. Remember that this is an encyclopedia, and we must at least look like one. Here's the same text corrected: :It is a wiki about the Disney Channel Original Series, Boneheads. It has many articles like Roccos and Bone. An account must be created in order to edit. Now, we will run this article through the seven critical criteria listed above and compare the final article to this. Bolding the Title We start out an article by restating the title of the article, and also bolding it for emphasis. This is a simple rule to remember and easy to add. Here we replace "It" and add an "The" to keep the sentence sensible: :The Boneheads Wiki is a wiki about the Disney Channel Original Series, Boneheads. ... When the article is a series, referring to Step 5, using 5 apostrophes () for bold and italics. Describing the Subject You need to add details about your topic. Here's some good starter questions: if it's a character, what episode did it appear in? If it's a place, what episode was it in? What events took place there? If it's an episode, what features are there? How is it watched? In our example article, we have one detail: the series ''Boneheads is one of many articles on the wiki. Here we add some more about the wiki as well as episodes: :The '''Boneheads Wiki is a wiki about the Disney Channel Original Series, Boneheads. It has many articles, such as Boneheads, Disney Channel, Frederator Studios, Roccos, Bone, Leroy, V. Nuss Flytrap and much more. In most of these episodes, such as the animated short, Roccos and Bone try to get babanas from Leroy, who is the main antagonist. The wiki was created on 2012 by SonictheHedgehogBoy200, and is now a very vibrant wiki—sustaining over 1000 edits a day. A person must create an account to edit and create new articles. Your details depend on the type of article you're creating. Think of the basics - a person who never played the game(s) would need to get a fair idea what it is. There are a few things that should be avoided when writing, such as adding speculation, rambling on about insignificant details, or putting overly dramatic or dark spins on things; a full list of common writing issues can be found here. Padding should also be avoided, and if you don't know the topic well-enough to do more than state the obvious, don't create the article at all. Newly created stubs will be deleted automatically so try to add a decent amount of information to the page you are creating. Remember, it's the amount of info that matters, not the length, and simple subjects will inevitably have small articles, but that does not make them stubs. Working with Links to as many articles as possible, created or not, adds greater navigation to the knowledge base. Created articles allow readers to move to a related topic, while red links (not created) give another user a chance to create the article (and go through these very same steps!), thus helping the wiki. However, no one link should appear twice in an article – leave other occurrences as plain text. Our example article includes one User namespace piped link for SonictheHedgehogBoy200, but in articles, mostly all links are to other articles. Note only the Boneheads page is created as of 04:52, March 23, 2012‎ (EST). :The Boneheads Wiki is a wiki about the Disney Channel Original Series, Boneheads. It has many articles, such as Boneheads, Disney Channel, Frederator Studios, Roccos, Bone, Leroy, V. Nuss Flytrap and much more. In most of these episodes, such as the animated short, Roccos and Bone try to get babanas from Leroy, who is the main antagonist. The wiki was created on 2012 by SonictheHedgehogBoy200, and is now a very vibrant wiki—sustaining over 1000 edits a day. A person must create an account to edit and create new articles. Italicizing Titles The wiki has decided it proper to respect all games, series, movies, television programs, albums (music) and publications (print: comics, books and magazines) by italicizing all of their titles, as well as linking them when need be the case in every article. When linking and italicizing, the syntax is Article Title. Song titles and episode names (i.e. of television series) are not italicized, but written in quotation marks. As our Boneheads Wiki article gets better, notice that the second occurrence of "Boneheads" is still italicized, just not linked. :The Boneheads Wiki is a wiki about the Disney Channel Original Series, Boneheads It has many articles, such as Boneheads, Disney Channel, Frederator Studios, Roccos, Bone, Leroy, V. Nuss Flytrap and much more. In most of these episodes, such as the animated short, Roccos and Bone try to get babanas from Leroy, who is the main antagonist. ... If certain templates, such as the About one, already have the italicized code in them, be sure to still italicize the title, setting it apart from the text (only now, the text is italicized and the title is plain). Categories There are a ton of categories and subcategories on this wiki, and every page can fit into at least one of them, if not many. Only the Main Page should be . But it's not as simple as putting every applicable category you can thin of onto an article. As explained on Boneheads Wiki:Categories, categories are organized so that very specific categories are placed on articles, and in turn, those categories are part of more general categories, leading up to the bare basics like Category:Episodes, Locations or Characters. So, while V. Nuss Flytrap technically fits in Category:Characters, Category:Male and Category:Bone Yardiants, only the latter category should be used, as it is the most specific option. Simply type Category:(Fullname), and the article is automatically added to the category; be sure to not include a space between "Category:" and the name. Let's say the categories Disney Channel, Wikis and Websites exist here, and that Wikis is a subcategory of Websites. In that case: :... The wiki was created on 2012 by SonictheHedgehogBoy200, and is now a very vibrant wiki—sustaining over 1000 edits a day. A person must create an account to edit and create new articles. : Note that Websites is not on the article, but it can still be reached by going through Wikis, just as this article can still be reached from Websites by going through the intermediate subcategory. Also note that categories and templates often overlap in subject matter. This is perfectly fine. However, templates are expected to provide enhanced navigation assets for readers (i.e. subdividing a large group of related pages by more specific criteria, such as characters vs. items appearing in the same episode). If a category or a group of categories adequately links a group of pages, a template may not be needed at all. ---- Congratulations! The article ''"Boneheads Wiki", with the text'' :The Boneheads Wiki is a wiki about the Disney Channel Original Series, Boneheads. It has many articles, such as Boneheads, Disney Channel, Frederator Studios, Roccos, Bone, Leroy, V. Nuss Flytrap and much more. In most of these episodes, such as the animated short, Roccos and Bone try to get babanas from Leroy, who is the main antagonist. The wiki was created on 2012 by SonictheHedgehogBoy200, and is now a very vibrant wiki—sustaining over 1000 edits a day. A person must create an account to edit and create new articles. : would be an '''acceptable article' on the Boneheads Wiki (if such an article were allowed). ' ''' Any article lacking in one of the seven criteria can and should be edited to correct its faults. This works not just for creating articles, but expanding and improving them too! The following sections deal with specific aspects of writing and additional features that can be added to the articles. Sections of an Article History History sections detail the various television series, video game, comic, etc. appearances of the article's subject. These sections are typically the first major section of an article, especially articles chronicling multiple appearances, after the article's introduction. Appearances in the History section are organized according to the international airdate of defined episodes (as opposed to general episodes), and independent titles, regardless of the "media" form the appearance takes. Series sub-sections are arranged by the airdate of the first appearance of the subject in the series. For example, in the Roccos article, the Creation and development section would appear some place after the Biography section, as Roccos and Bone's first appearance in a Creation and development occurred after their first appearance in the Biography. If there is not enough content to mention every appearance in a series, the information can simply be merged under the series section, and other sub-sections need not be created. For example, if there is enough content to detail all of Roccos' appearances in the episodes, sub-sections for each game could be created; if there is not enough information for each game, it can all be placed under the Series section, without creating sub-sections for each individual title. Episodes of a television or comic series are organized as sub-sections of the series section. Trivia Many articles have Trivia sections where miscellaneous points are placed, however, this is actually discouraged. Long Trivia sections reflect goodly on the article as a whole, so whenever possible, try to incorporate this information elsewhere on the page. Trivia points that merely state the obvious or reiterate facts already embedded in the text should not be created, and speculative information must be backed by hard facts or it will be removed. Miscellaneous Verb Tense Fiction When writing an article describing characters, events, or places from fictional sources (e.g. TV shows, comics, films, games, literature, etc.), present tense should be used. :The Alaskan Bull Cobra is a giant cobra that appeared in the Boneheads episode, "Bonehead vs. Cobra". The cobra is able to easily destroy property by eating it. It is one of the largest creatures in the series as its mouth is mistaken to be a giant cave, its tongue is mistaken to be a giant cobra, and its size is enough to crush an entire city. Non-fiction When writing non-fiction, such as a biography or the history of Boneheads, past and present tense can be used as needed, depending on whether whatever is being described has already happened or is in the process of happening. :Blake Michael (born July 31, 1996) is an American actor, film director, and singer. He is known in several roles on Disney Channel, including Charlie Delgado in Lemonade Mouth, Tyler James in Dog with a Blog and, pretty soon, Roccos in Boneheads. Tables are sometimes the best way to display information. For example, instead of listing all the courses of a racing game and their accompanying locations, staff ghosts, and other information would go more nicely in a table than a simple list following a repetitive pattern many a time. Images Finding an image for an article can be difficult. Google never works, and not everyone has access to sprites. If you are lucky enough to find an image, , see and for syntax, and then add it to an article. Generally, a small image would use the frame, right and caption commands, a large image would use the thumb, right and caption commands—though sometimes different alignment is necessary. The first image should go on the first line of the edit box, even before the first sentence, and then additional images can be added inbetween sections as size allows. If an article needs an image to help illustrate a point but you cannot find one, add to the top of the edit box, which leads into the second enhancement. Redirects Other Templates Boneheads Wiki:Templates discusses a few other types of templates for use in articles, images and talk pages. Regular notice templates go at the tops of articles to bring attention to maintenance issues or specific conditions surrounding the article in question. For example, is placed on an article if it is still in the process of being written, thus letting readers know that they can expect that some aspects of the page will be incomplete. Templates concerning the subject matter rather than the state of the article includes , which needs to be put on all episodes that have been confirmed but not yet aired, while goes on pages related to upcoming or newly aired episodes. In addition, there are some templates that form a table to fill in quick statistics, known as "infoboxes". These special templates should go into every article it applies to: in this case, every episode article, respectively. We suggest searching through Category:Templates to get a feel of what templates are available besides navigational ones. More specific template categories include Category:Article management templates and Category:Infobox templates.